Instead of making SV or Marks go petless, the 4th spec somebody suggested could be the petless spec. But just so the pets aren't doing absolutely nothing for that spec, it could be that the Gunslinger instead absorbs their pet and fuses with it. Which would grant them the ability that pet used. That way you get a petless spec while still being able to bring whatever buff that pet had.

Instead of making SV or Marks go petless, the 4th spec somebody suggested could be the petless spec. But just so the pets aren't doing absolutely nothing for that spec, it could be that the Gunslinger instead absorbs their pet and fuses with it. Which would grant them the ability that pet used. That way you get a petless spec while still being able to bring whatever buff that pet had.

No no no no no no no no no no no... why? Because lets look at it from a logical perspective... hunters have abilities that use the word aim or precision... so that would require both hands to do that shot... are you saying one of the specs should be built so hunters can DW? Because how it is now... hunters wouldn't be able to use half their abilities. And the most obvious reason why they'll never be in the game... is because no one else but hunters can utilize them... why bother creating another ranged weapon that only one class can use? It's utterly pointless... why not create rpg's for hunters while we're at it? It's not any more ridiculous as DW. This will never happen and I'm sorry if you're offended... but this was a poorly thought out idea... immediately I was able to see the flaws... big flaws.

No no no no no no no no no no no... why? Because lets look at it from a logical perspective... hunters have abilities that use the word aim or precision... so that would require both hands to do that shot... are you saying one of the specs should be built so hunters can DW? Because how it is now... hunters wouldn't be able to use half their abilities. And the most obvious reason why they'll never be in the game... is because no one else but hunters can utilize them... why bother creating another ranged weapon that only one class can use? It's utterly pointless... why not create rpg's for hunters while we're at it? It's not any more ridiculous as DW. This will never happen and I'm sorry if you're offended... but this was a poorly thought out idea... immediately I was able to see the flaws... big flaws.

Agg daggers says hi Only class that CAN use it are rogues, so your argument is invalid.

I've made a tweet to ghostcrawler he replied twice with the following:
It would require a lot of new animation and itemization and we're not sure the gain, while positive, would be worth the cost.
(And whenever I say "cost" I am talking about production time, which is much more salient to our development than dollars.)

DW Guns? Nah. It would look cool... for a time, but realistically the novelty would wear off and you'd be left with a silly looking hunter trying to down gigantic raid -bosses with little pea-shooters. The large rifle style gun suits the Marksmanship aspect of a ranged class, along with the Bow/X-Bow.

As for no-pet specs, I'm 100% with this. Beast Mastery should be the only hunter spec with pets.

They can't because the wow character skeletal system (rendering engine, whatever you want to call it) is apparently not that dynamic. It's why they don't simply add a /psy to make everybody start galloping on pretend horses. In a word, animation. They'd have to animate, separately I'm guessing, both genders of each hunter race to make the motions.

Unfortunately, changing the underlying system that deeply is the kind of thing one normally sees in a sequel, not an expansion pack.